I am glad here to re-assert opinions which it has grieved me to be suspected of having changed.

The calmer tone of

the second volume of "Modern Painters," as compared with the first, induced, I believe, this suspicion, very

justifiably, in the minds of many of its readers. The difference resulted, however, from the simple fact, that the first

was written in great haste and indignation, for a special purpose and time; — the second, after I had got engaged,

almost unawares, in inquiries which could not be hastily nor indignantly pursued: my opinions remaining then, and

remaining now, altogether unchanged on the subject which led me into the discussion. And that no farther doubt of

them may be entertained by any who may think them worth questioning, I shall here, once for all, express them in

the plainest and fewest words I can. I think that J. M. W. Turner is not only the greatest (professed) landscape

painter who ever lived, but that he has in him as much as would have furnished all the rest with such power as they

had; and that, if we put Nicolo Poussin, Salvator, and our own Gainsborough out of the group, he would cut up into

Claudes, Cuyps, Ruysdaels, and such others, by uncounted bunches. I hope this is plainly and strongly enough

stated. And farther, I like his later pictures, up to the year 1845, the best; and believe that those persons who only

like his early pictures do not, in fact, like him at all. They do not like that which is essentially his. They like that in

which he resembles other men; which he had learned from Loutherbourg, Claude, or Wilson: that which is indeed

his own, they do not care for. Not that there is not much of his own in his early works; they are all invaluable in

their way; but those persons who can find no beauty in his strangest fantasy on the Academy walls, cannot

distinguish the peculiarly Turneresque characters of the earlier pictures. And, therefore, I again state here, that I

think his pictures painted between the years 1830 and 1845 his greatest; and that his entire power is best

represented by such pictures as the Turneresque characters of the earlier pictures. And, therefore, I again state here,

that I think his pictures painted between the years 1830 and 1845 his greatest; and that his entire power is best

represented by such pictures as the Temeraire the Sun of Venice going to Sea, and others, painted exactly at the

time when the public and the press were together loudest in abuse of him.

I desire, however, the reader to observe that I said, above, professed landscape painters, among whom, perhaps, I

should hardly have put Gainsborough. The landscape of the great figure painters is often majestic in the highest

degree, and Tintoret's especially shows exactly the same power and feeling as Turner's. If with Turner I were to

rank the historical painters as landscapists, esti- Turner. Tintoret. mating rather the power they show, than the actual

Masaccio. value of the landscape they produced, I should class John Bellini, those, whose landscapes I have

studied, in some such Albert Durer. order as this at the side of the page ;—associating Giorgione. with the

landscape of Perugino that of Francia Paul Veronese, and Angelico, and the other severe painters of Titian, religious
subject.